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Tuesday, May 14, 2013

What is Social Justice? (Part Two)

The teachings of Vatican II, Paul VI, John Paul II, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church

“Social justice,” a term coined by
the Italian Jesuit Father Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio (1793-1862), appeared in an
1894 curial document and a 1904 encyclical. Later, Pope Pius XI (1922-39) made
it part and parcel of Catholic social doctrine.

In perhaps the most succinct
description of the virtue, Pope Pius wrote in 1937 that “it is [the essence] of
social justice to demand from individuals everything that is necessary for the
common good.” Venerable Pius XII (1939-58) and Blessed John XXIII (1958-63)
made Pope Pius XI’s teaching their own as they urged Catholics to cultivate the
virtue of social justice. The former wrote in 1952 that society “ought to be
renewed according to principles of charity and social justice,” while the
latter prayed in 1960 that Christians might “offer to fellow citizens examples
of all virtues, in the first place social justice and charity.”

The three decades following John
XXIII’s death witnessed further developments in Catholic teaching on social
justice. In 1992, Catholic doctrine on social justice was set forth with
particular authority when Blessed John Paul II promulgated the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Vatican II

The term “social justice” appeared
three times in the documents of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council
(1962-65). In Nostra
Aetate (1965), the Declaration on the Relation of the Church
with Non-Christian Religions, the Council Fathers exhorted Christians and
Muslims to “preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all
mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom” (no.
3).

Six weeks later, in the Pastoral
Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium
et Spes), the Council Fathers observed that “excessive economic
and social differences between the members of the one human family or population
groups cause scandal and militate against social justice, equity, the dignity
of the human person, as well as social and international peace” (no. 29). The
Council Fathers called for the creation of an “organism of the universal
Church” whose role would be “to stimulate the Catholic community to promote
progress in needy regions and international social justice”—in the original
Latin, “social justice among nations.” Venerable Paul VI established that
organism, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, in 1967.

The three conciliar references to
social justice use the term in the context of “all mankind,” the “one human
family,” and “among nations.”